The Longest Tea Party
by DorianGray91
Summary: One-shot. The aftermath of Alice's departure, and the moment of her return. That sounds stereotypical and rubbish, but my take on it will make up for all of that, promise. Please review!


_He thought he saw a Rattlesnake  
That questioned him in Greek:  
He looked again, and found it was  
The Middle of Next Week.  
"The one thing I regret," he said,  
"Is that it cannot speak!"_

* * *

The tea party raged on.  
And when I say that it raged, I rather mean that it yawned.  
It yawned in a raging sort of fashion.

It trudged ferociously. It snailed haphazardly. It even crawled belligerently.

Its apathetic decadence would have made any other grown man weep. But as for Tarrant - as for the mad, Mad Hatter - it only seemed to make him more sideways.

I think it would be safe to say that Onwards, Upwards, Downwards and Backwards had long ago gotten up from the pristinely laid table, quietly coughed their thanks for the delicious beverages, and left altogether. They had a lot of other places to be, to send people to, and to bring people back from.

Only Sideways had stayed, and slowly stirred a finger around his still-warm cup.  
He stayed because he knew. Only he knew.  
And Hatter was so very sideways, that there wasn't much point in being Sideways anywhere else.

Father Time, too, had been and gone. While the celebrations had surged and the smiles were many and the sugar cubes were plentiful, he had been most inclined to stick around.

But even Time will get bored of the passing days, and the laughter that wilts, and the glances that become gazes and then stares. The Hatter's stares, one morning, had just been too much for old Time. He had simply turned tail and fled, and he didn't think that Tarrant had even noticed all that much.

So now the tea party hadn't the Time; the watches had stopped, morning was always afternoon, while afternoon was not a time at all, and Sideways was the only guest left.

The Dormouse had not emerged from her favourite teapot for a great length. The Hare was beginning to wonder if she had ever really existed, or whether he had made her up to stave off the boredom, and then forgotten.

The state of the tea party's members in no way reflected the party itself.  
And why should it? No respectable tea party was going to simply let itself go in the middle of the White Queen's reign, just because a couple of ignorant Creatures and a Metaphorical Direction were slumping about like a bunch of miserable toads.

The long table was resplendent, white and gently gleaming. It sat in the corner of a large, neatly mown garden, around the earthy borders of which overflowed towering explosions of flowers. Pink pansies, burgundy birds of paradise, cream carnations, golden geraniums, indigo irises, red roses, white wisterias - all chattered and nattered amongst themselves.

The world was alive. The spring was eternal. The air was delicately perfumed with nature, the breeze soft as toves' fur, and just as slithy.

The regal palace shimmered like pearl in the near distance, behind the tall rectangular barrier of illustrious green leaves. The hedges here were all very fussy, and preened themselves as often as the gardeners. They were also awfully fond of straight lines and ninety-degree angles, and kept to them wherever they could.

The sad trio at the table, and the invisible other in the teapot, were often a topic of conversation amongst the vegetation. But mostly the discussions were brief, and decreasingly sympathetic.  
It remained a mystery as to why they kept waiting, when She was quite blatantly never going to come back.

Even the White Queen kept her distance, having no taste for the aura of distinctive, cutting pains that hung about the head of the Hatter.  
He couldn't have told you the last time that he saw her - partly because Time had left them, and mostly because he was mad.

He was madder than he had ever dared to be before, and this definition of _mad _was gradually swinging towards hot, branded anger as well as unsettling insanity.

Every day his eyes were a little less green.

Then, quite suddenly - at no particularly significant point unless you were to scour very thoroughly through the Oraculum compendium - he stood up from his place at the table's head, with such force and veracity that he upset his cup and sadly stained the tablecloth.

"I propose!" he growled in a horrifying Scottish tone that most definitely meant trouble, "That we begin investigating all the things beginning with the letter A."

"_A_?" Mally the mouse's voice echoed from inside her teapot, making the Hare jump, "But last time we got up to the letter _H_. Do we have to start over?"  
"We reached the letter _H _just after the Majesty left us for the last time! I 'ave forgotten everything. _We begin again_." he demanded.

"... Apricot?" the March Hare suggested helpfully.  
"No, no, no. Far too dull."

Tarrant's too-large eyes roved blindly about him in consternation.  
The truth was that he was searching for a particular A word, a word that he couldn't fully grasp, but that had some awfully important weight.

"I'm bored." sulked Mally.  
"Fine!" the Hatter spat, really quite put out, "Fine, have it your way! Let us consider all things beginning with the letter P."

The Mouse was about to point out that this still did not resolve their earlier issue of already being past the letter Q, but the Hare broke in again.

"Palace." he stated very simply, gesturing towards the castle.

The human froze, quite deadly still, orange orbs narrowed as though with intense concentration.  
That thing that danced and shimmered away within his crowded mind - always slipping - but he nearly had it. It had something to do with this. It was on the tip of his tongue.

"Palace." he echoed, timidly exploring the gentle sounds, assured that the _something _he searched for lay hidden in between them. It rang like a silver chime as it fell from his mouth.

"Wait! Do you hear that?" Mallyumpkin cried abruptly.  
"Yes, yes. Again. There it is, it's in there somewhere." he muttered, "Palace. Palace. _Palace_."

"No! I mean do you hear _that_?"  
"Hear what?"  
"_That_! Listen!"

He pricked up his ears and strained. It was difficult to keep up with Mally's senses.  
No. Nothing.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you've gone _mad_." he guffawed, and finally sat down.

And then, and then - it _was _there.  
And the convoluted, inexplicable, dancing thing that had been haunting his mind since before Time had left him unfolded like a flower, sweet and sincere, and laid itself out before him in a wild shower of pristine glory.

It was his name.  
It was his name being called by a voice he knew.

"Hatter? Hatter!"

The call was only a hedge or two away.  
Any second now, it would slip around the corner, and he would slip back into Life.

He rose again, so shakily this time, leaning on the table for support.  
His eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the spot where She would appear.

_Alice._

A faint, strange-feeling smile tingled and tugged at the corners of his mouth.  
His mouth was dry, his heart palpitating. But he was alright.  
For the first time, he was going to be alright.

"I'd know you anywhere." he whispered.


End file.
